Pocket of Black Dogtooth Crystals at MFQ

 

Missy and I had nothing better to do with our time yesterday so we got up early and headed south to MFQ. It was a bit froggy when we took off west and shortly I found out, the fog was heavy up on the hills and almost non existent in the valleys, which is usually the opposite of normal. I had received a call from a good friend down there the evening before and he told me that the blast pile was completely removed and the walls of that coved blast area now exposed, so I figured it would be a good time to drive down and check it out. 

It stayed foggy the whole way down there, and when we arrived,  I drove down past the old hunting area and over to the new coved section of the wall, and sure enough, the blast pile was all gone except for a few boulders and the walls looked untouched….

01 Arrival Pile is Removed

 

…it was still a little foggy as you can see above…but as long as I could see the walls, I was okay…got my boots and hard hat on fast and grabbed my tools and a bag of wrapping cloths and was soon looking for crystals that had rolled down the piles from the walls to figure out the location of pockets…here are the walls up closer from right to left….

02 The Cove Right to Left

 

03 The Cove Right to Left

 

04 The Cove Right to Left

 

05 The Cove Right to Left

 

06 The Cove Right to Left

 

…you can see in the wall photos that they look vuggy and believe me, they were…..within a few minutes I had located three nice crystals and a medium sized cluster of crystals…

07 First Few Found

 

…including this beautiful dark gray, almost black, poker chip crystal in matrix….

08 Dark Grey Poker Chip Cluster

 

My buddy Jim came by a few minutes later, just as I was starting to locate pockets, he and his girlfriend had been up in town and he told me that by the evening, the main highway which is also their Main Street, would be closed to traffic, for a street dance this weekend. I assured him I would not be going into town.  We chatted a bit more and then they took off to get their day started and I set about looking for crystals. By this time, the fog was beginning to lift a bit….

09 Foggy Morning

….and soon after when it lifted completely, I was so deep in crystals that I didn`t even notice it. I found the first set of pockets straight back in the middle of the back wall, at the top of the falldown material, and began burrowing into the wall at that spot……

10 First Three Pockets Found

….where you see the bags above, and soon the first few crystals I removed from that spot were clusters of black dogtooth poker chips….

11 First Three Pockets Found

….the first five I pulled out in fact…here are a couple of them….

2 Dogtooth Crystals

….and the next thing I knew, the pocket branched off to the right and left into two other pockets, one mixed with dolomite druse as is often the case there….

12 First Three Pockets Found

 

…and here are more of the crystals from those other two pockets…. 

21 Crystals From 1st 3 Pockets

 

22 More From 1st 3 Pockets

…but you wont hear me complaining cause I personally like the poker chips surrounded and imbedded in the dolomite druse, cause it looks like marcasite or pyrite instead of druse, in the sunlight, by the way it sparkles alot…occasionally I see some of that mixed into the druse too. I filled five bags completely full with the crystals from these three pockets, and then stood up to take a break, and stretch my legs and walk around a bit…Missy had finished her rounds and was laying in the shade under the tailgate of my truck by then…I walked over and got a bottle of water and took a long drink and then grabbed another bag and decided to walk the wall and see if I could locate any other crystals loose or in pockets. It didn`t take long to find some out in plain site along the wall and I was able to remove quite a few nice ones…I wrapped those up and then started to return to the first set of pockets. I was climbing back up the pile to retrieve my mini mattox, and off to the left side about twenty feet from the original pockets, when I noticed some loose poker chips in the pile…I reached down to pick them up and all of a sudden, more appeared underneath in the rubble, so I began digging down and soon after, discovered a pocket down deeper in the pile….

13 Fourth Pocket in PIle

 

…that had apparently fell off the top somewhere months back and was buried all this time intact….I pulled several nice crystals out of this pocket…they were intact and in good health, protected because the rocks surrounding the crystals came down completely intact as well. I decided to stop and work this pocket and then finish up the original pocket afterwards…it took me well over an hour to empty this pocket, pulling out several nice clusters and crystals embedded in a sea of dolomite druse, some of it a bright yellow color….

14 Fourth Pocket in PIle

 

15 Fourth Pocket in PIle

 

…as you can see, they were tightly packed in there, and pulling them out was no easy task, cause there was a huge pile of sand and small rocks up on top that kept on sliding down occasionally…like whenever I pulled a crystal out of the pocket….

16 Fourth Pocket in PIle

 

…after about the fourth slide of rocks and sand, I triggered a large slide and got it all out of the way, and then began digging down into the pocket once again, this time without all the hangover stuff to worry about….

17 Fourth Pocket in PIle After Slide

 

…and here you can see I haven`t gotten to the point of triggering the final slide yet, cause it`s still raining down below a bit….but I`m getting close to the back of the pocket and the only thing left are some druse attached pieces to pull out….

18 4th Pocket Almost Cleaned Out

 

19 4th Pocket Almost Cleaned Out

 

…and here are a few of the crystals I pulled from this pocket found in the pile….

20 Pulled From 4th Pocket

 

 

…including this nice large double poker chip crystal….

23 Large Poker Chip from Pile Pocket

 

as well as this smaller dogtooth with slight damage to it….

24 Dogtooth From Pile Pocket

 

…and here is another beautiful brown dogtooth double that I pulled out of the first pocket found….

Twin Brown Dogtooth

 

After finishing up cleaning out the original three pockets, I moved along the wall to the right, and found a few more crystals in some smaller pockets, and then discovered a pocket full of druse…since they sometimes contain poker chips too, I checked it out and discovered they were either plates and chunks of bubbled black colored druse, or druse with hematite balls all over them. I`m still not quite sure, but maybe after I clean them up I will have a better idea…at any rate, I filled two bags full from this one pocket and had two large ones that didn`t fit in the bag. We headed home soon after that, very tired and very satisfied. I`ll get some more photos on here as soon as I finish the cleaning work. 

if you have any questions or wanna say hi, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com

 

Poker Chips and Dogtooth Crystals…

Dont worry folks, I`m still hunting frequently, just been busy helping my parents with storm damage from a few weeks ago and catching up on some other details here at home, and still have about ten bags of crystals to clean up…will get the details and photos posted on here soon. Been finding some spectacular stuff lately. The details don`t matter as much as the photos, so here are some photos showing what I have been finding lately….

01 Found in Big Pocket

 

02 Backside of 01

 

03

 

04

 

05

 

06

 

Flat of Crystals

 

Flat Two

For the fluorite fans, the June Celebration Dig and Rock Show will be the last weekend of May, which is the first weekend of June as well, at Marion, Kentucky. Hope to see you there.